Found to-day, of nests, one song sparrow, one small pewee, one yellowbird, one chip-bird, three catbirds, one chewink, one robin..

June 9.

P. M. — To Wheeler’s azalea swamp, across meadow.

Early primrose done, say-two days. An orchis, probably yellowish, will be common in Wheeler’s meadow. 

Sidesaddle, apparently a day or two; petals hang down. 

A song sparrow’s nest low in Wheeler’s meadow, with five eggs, made of grass lined with hair. 

Rhus Toxicodendron on Island Rock. 

The nest probably of the small pewee — looking from the ground like a yellowbird’s, showing reddish wool of ferns —against a white birch, on a small twig, eighteen feet from ground. Four little eggs, all pale cream-color before blowing, white after - fresh. 

A yellowbird’s nest eight feet from ground in crotch of a very slender maple. 

A chip-bird’s in a white thorn on the Hill; one egg.

A catbird’s nest, three eggs, in a high blueberry, four feet from ground, with rather more dry leaves than usual, above Assabet Spring. 

Lambkill out. 

Catbird’s nest, one egg, on a blueberry bush, three feet from ground, of (as usual) sticks, leaves, bark, roots. Another near same (also in V. Muhlenbergii Swamp) on a bent white birch and andromeda, eighteen inches from ground; three eggs; stubble of weeds mainly instead of twigs, otherwise as usual. 

A chewink’s nest sunk in ground under a bank covered with ferns, dead and green, and huckleberry bushes; composed of dry leaves, then grass stubble, and lined with a very few slender, reddish moss stems; four eggs, rather fresh; merely enough moss stems to indicate its choice. 

Fever-root, perhaps several days. 

See very few hawks for several weeks. 

Found to-day, of nests, one song sparrow, one small pewee, one yellowbird, one chip-bird, three catbirds, one chewink, one robin (the last on a black willow, two feet from ground, one egg). 

I think I have hardly heard a bobolink for a week or ten days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 9, 1855

Sidesaddle, apparently a day or two; petals hang down. Sarracenia purpurea, also known as the purple pitcherplant or northern pitcher plant, the only pitcherplant native to New England. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

Lambkill out. See June 13, 1852 ("Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings.All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes.");June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year, — and sometimes those of the year before are two inches lower."); June 25, 1852 ("Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder, six inches long and two and a half in diameter, of rich red saucer-like flowers, the counterpart of the latifolia in flowers and flower- buds, but higher colored. I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. It has a slight but not remarkable scent") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

I think I have hardly heard a bobolink for a week or ten days. See June 15, 1852 ("The note of the bobolink begins to sound somewhat rare"); June 19, 1853 ("The strain of the bobolink now begins to sound a little rare. It never again fills the air as the first week after its arrival") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

 

June 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 9

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021